What goes into your business battle plan

People hear me say hard work and imagine long hours, and yes, the hours are real. But hard work is not a mood. It is a list. When you are working the day-to-day of your company, there are things that have to get done every day, and the discipline is knowing exactly what they are, in writing, and making sure every one of them is moving.

I call that list the battle plan, because that is how it functions. It is not a vision statement and it is not a five-year forecast. It is the set of actions that must happen today, area by area, for the company to still be winning tonight.

Here is what that list actually contains.

The areas, one by one

The executive area has a list. Either you have people in that area doing those things, or you have to do them yourself. The same goes for HR: there is a list of items that must happen, and somebody's name has to be on each one.

Then the selling. Senior to everything, you have to sell your product or service. You have to keep it coming in, because without sales you have no company. You stay on this one like a monster: is the selling occurring today? Not last quarter. Today.

Then the accounting and the bookkeeping, and that has to be perfect, or tax time and payroll will teach you an expensive lesson. Are you spending more than you are making? You have to know this data, not feel it.

Then delivery. Did you ship the product? Did the customer receive it? Are they happy with it? Then customer service and quality control: how are the people inside your company performing, and when something comes out wrong, you fix the product, the service, or the person who produced it.

And then there is what the world thinks about you. You have to keep people thinking well of you. It sounds corny, but reputation is an area of the company like any other, and it needs daily attention like any other.

Write it down and rank it

All of this has to be written down. Not remembered. Written. Some items matter more than others, and some are exceedingly important, so the list gets ranked, and the exceedingly important ones get checked first, every day, without exception.

Notice the pattern in everything above: for each area, either you have people in that area doing those things, or you have to do them yourself. When you are small, your name is next to most of the lines, and that is fine. That is what starting a company is. As you grow, the battle plan is also your map for hiring, because every cluster of lines that eats your day is a position waiting to be filled. You are not guessing at what the new person will do. It is already written down.

This is the actual content of the phrase hard work. It is not heroics. It is a battle plan: every area of the company named, every daily action listed, every action owned by a person, and you, the owner or the executive, walking the list every day to confirm the whole machine is turning.

And walking it means walking it. Did the selling occur today? Did the shipments go out? Did the books get posted? Is anybody's area quietly stalled? You ask the questions every day, because every one of these areas can drift, and drift is silent.

Most businesses do not fail from one dramatic blow. They fail because three quiet items on this list went unwatched for a month. Write the plan, rank it, and walk it daily. That is the job.